[Simh] Cross Compilers (and memories thereof)

[Timothe Litt]

On 23-Feb-16 12:32, Armistead, Jason BIS wrote:
> Let's move this to a new thread subject of its own !
>
> On Tuesday, 23 February 2016 12:04 PM, Davis Johnson <davis at frizzen.com> wrote (under old subject Re: [Simh] Interdata OS/32: hello-world in CAL32) :
>
>> One that I remember was TI had a 9900 cross assembler written in FORTRAN (all caps in those days). It was free to educational institutions.
>> I talked a prof. into requesting it, but the available FORTRAN compiler didn't like it.
> Another now-defunct company, Microtec Research Incorporated (purchased by Mentor Graphics in late 1995), definitely had a TI9900 cross assembler written in FORTRAN from 1983.  We had the source code under license and compiled it under VAX/VMS (complete with CLI switches), and with a few custom tweaks, it was largely compatible with SDSMAC that ran on TI's 990 computer systems (now simulated via Dave Pitts' SIM990).  There was also a linker/loader that produced Tektronix HEX output (similar to TI's SDSLNK) as the final executable.  I was able to
Tektronix had a VMS-hosted cross-compiler & IDE for the 68000 that was
used by a number of DEC communications projects.  And one of mine.  I
didn't have sources, but I did have an interesting time with it. 
Replacing some RTL routines to allow multitasking.  And then there was
the problem of where it put string literals.  I ended up having the C
compiler output assembly, then inserting a processing step to move the
literals to ROM, eliminate duplicates, consolidate substrings -- and
then let the assembler and linker do their things.  One could get almost
position-independent code out of it, so with some more out-of-band
fixups, I could get tasks to load from the (flash) filesystem... I ended
up writing a custom OS that had a rather similar API to VMS - QIOs,
event flags, ASTs - all in an unmapped 68000.  I shared code written in
C between VMS device drivers/user level and the embedded system.  Not
many #ifdefs.  I did use 32 bits in some structures that VMS skimped
on.  But SDL was really handy for keeping the definitions consistent
between two 32-bit and two 8-bit architectures....

Microtec Research bought the cross-compiler suite from Tek sometime in
the 90s.  Tek was in one of those "consolidating to core business"
phases.  Of course, their core business was the world's best CRTs.  (For
oscilloscopes.)




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